January 23, 2008

Google Earth: 1,000 Human Lifetimes Spent Looking At It

Michael Arrington

28 comments »

Google’s Marissa Mayer gave a “deep dive” presentation on Google Earth at the DLD conference in Munich yesterday (see our coverage from the first day here). Her presentation is embedded below. Lots of interesting stats and creative use of the technology: “Hundreds of millions of Google Earth downloads and activations,” and the equivalent of “1,000 human lifetimes have been spent looking at Google Earth.” Many people are now using sketchup to build 3D models.

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  1. kirainet

    How many lifetimes playing Minesweeper or Solitaire?

  2. taylor

    did this cameraman shoot blair witch?

  3. Michael Arrington

    it was me. :-) I was sitting on the ground and kept getting bumped. Plus, I suck at it.

  4. Kevin

    “Hundreds of millions of Google Earth downloads and activiations,” and the equivalent of “1,000 human lifetimes have been spent looking at Google Earth.” Do we need to teach her maths ???

  5. T-Systems

    It seems you work hard earning your flight on the Google plane :D

  6. Bali

    Google plane is real

  7. James

    Assuming worldwide average 50 years, 1000 people, 500m downloads (hundred of millions!) then that equates to around an hour of use a piece.

    Is that really impressive? I think not.

  8. Jason

    I agree, that number is low.

  9. Igor Carron

    Just in time to mention the release of Make3d, a site that produces 3D view from single snapshots:

    http://make3d.stanford.edu/

    One can imagine taking photos of building and making instant 3D models of entire towns.

    Enjoy,

    Igor.
    http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.c.....ingle.html

  10. NotABug

    Wonder how many hours people spend everyday (and nights) on FrostWire or Bittorrent.

    Its a little scary all the information available, airplane altitudes and locations and what not, the world gets easier and easier for terrorists to plan their attacks (Not that they wouldn’t plan them anyway without these services, but this certainly lowers their budgets)

  11. CanCar

    With this new tool we will be able not only to create our own designs, but that most important, we will fun doing it. That´s great!

  12. Dave

    she’s so hot.

  13. .rb

    I think 1,000 life times / is a big number. Since we all only get 1.

    - if it was 1 hour a download / of use, that is great for free software.

  14. Andres

    Glad to see the mainstream geospatial tools continue to build momentum. NASA’s World Wind application provides an alternative to GE as well.

    Story has been added and indexed on BlinkGeo Stories:
    http://stories.blinkgeo.com

  15. TechBubba

    I agree, she is so hot. Yum yum.

  16. Gabe

    Human lifetimes is kind of creepy as a unit of time. Evokes waste and bad prioritization. Useful for describing a distasteful activity, not something good.

  17. Don

    Who the hell shot this? Not enough footage of Marissa Mayer. I would work at Google just so I could meet her.

  18. Bali

    Glad to see the mainstream geospatial tools continue to build momentum.

  19. Jeff Kloden

    “Deep dive”? I used to work at EBay, during the time when the auction businsess started to go into a deep dive. The managers there used to love the word “deep dive”.

  20. John

    I wonder how many human hours have been spent watching porn on the internet. that would be impressive.

  21. 338

    Il y a environ un an j’ai acheté le plateau à huîtres personnel du champion français d’ouverture d’huîtres à la brasserie Lorraine à Paris pour 100 Euros.
    Le mec arrive à ouvrir 216 huîtres toutes les 5 minutes.
    Un an plus tard je me demande si j’aurais fait mieux d’acheter la souri du pire des employées de chez Google, juste pour une question de productivité. Regarde un peu :
    - le modèle de revenu chez Google est d’employer des cons pour les faire clicker le plus rapidement possible sur des liens sponsorisés par des loosers.
    - sur un effectif de 16.000 employées il y en a 15.998 qui font ça du matin au soir.
    - ils font un chiffre d’affaires d’environ 4 Milliards de dollars.
    - avec un prix moyen par click d’environ 0.20$ l’employé type de cette étrange boite clicke pour environ 65 fois toutes les 5 minutes, bien inférieur à la performance de l’effort humain et intellectuel du meilleur ouvreur d’huîtres de France.
    La dernière frontière du travail c’est bien aux USA. Travailler moins pour gagner plus.
    Et pendant ce temps, comme par hazard, le cours de l’action monte.

  22. chris

    @9: it’s only as scary as your government wants you to believe. we wouldn’t be in this dilemma if we would have more respect for each other.

  23. Dustin

    So how many life-times have been spent on the google website itself? I bet that number is astonishing.

  24. RichardT

    Very interesting video. I spend a lot of my day developing applications harnessing the power of Google Earth (and Maps) and found this a very comprehensive look into how these products are being used.

    Does anyone know what happens at 5:25 in the video? It sounds interesting…